01 April 2012

Dalen Products 100% Natural Jute Twine

Despite the many synthetic and natural twines I've reviewed over the years, when it comes down to my everyday workhorse I've always enjoyed a good jute twine. The word brings to mind old sailing ships and Rudyard Kipling novels and the Dutch East India Company.

This is distributed by the Knoxville, Tennessee company Dalen Products, which makes a wide range of gardening equipment including netting and domestically produced hand-painted owls to scare off pests.

This is definitely an all natural jute twine, with a good scratchy character and stray fibers poking out regularly (all that friction makes for strong knots that won't slip). The cord has great tensile strength and held up well as I was tethering a young Bartlett pear sapling in the front yard. Once the tree is strong enough to stand, I can toss the scraps in the compost pile because jute is biodegradable, recyclable, and on top of that, it's a renewable resource.

Inside I used the twine to tie up bundles of cardboard boxes to take to the recycling center, and used a few decorative knots to hang a hand-carved picture frame I made back when I was a kid. At the end of my projects, my hands were covered with the unmistakable petrol/cedar/hay aroma of jute. Such good memories from over the years. While I prefer a spool of twine that unwinds from the center, I was still very pleased with this twine and award it a score of 4.5 out of 5.

By the way, I hope to see my fellow twinebloggers at the Kleinburg Binder Twine Festival this September in Ontario, Canada. We all had a great time last year and this one promises to be even better, with a focus on locally produced twine. I'll be heading up a panel discussion following my presentation "Is the World Ready for Biodynamic Twine? I'm a Frayed Knot."